Connected TVs in more than 1/3 US Homes, Get Moving on Your Strategy!

The new Emerging Video Service VI report from Leichtman Research Group shows that around 38% of US Homes now have a connected TV in them. I’ve been telling everyone for about a year that this was going to play a major role in online video consumption soon and you all should have started looking at ways to get your content or ads to these screens. Have you? Now it seems it’s even more important to start if you haven’t.

Game consoles are connecting TVs to the Internet along with everything from the A/V tuner to the Blu-Ray player to the TV itself. That means you, as Internet video content creators and advertisers, need to make sure you’re ready for a shift in how people consume that content, from sitting at a PC or starting at a tablet to the full-on living room, massive TV screen experience. In just two years the adoption of connected TVs (whether stand alone or with a connected device) has jumped 30%. With the big push in TVs with Internet capability this year, it could drive that number well over 50% at year’s end.

These connected devices are rapidly increasing the number of people consuming Internet content on the TV. In two years it’s gone up 8% to 13% of all adults, or, estimating around 250 million adult Americans, around 32.5 million people. That’s a good audience for anything and getting your content to them is vital because right now many people are probably starting to accept online content through their televisions and that means they’re looking for content to become loyal followers of.

Sure, you might think that you can just target them on the PC, but about 4% of US homes are only connected to the Internet through the TV. That’s at least 10 million Americans that might not be getting your message or content.

Granted, a good portion of these people are Netflix users, 35% of whom watch Internet on a connected device weekly. In fact, 16% of adults weekly use Netflix’s Watch Instantly and 79% of that group do so on a TV while 59% of them access it on a video game system (woo!)

“Video is increasingly being watched on different platforms and in different places, yet these emerging video services still generally act as complements to traditional television viewing and services rather than as substitutes,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “Among all adults, reported time spent watching TV is similar to last year, and there remains little evidence of a significant trend in consumers ‘cutting the cord’ to their multi-channel video services to watch video solely via these emerging services.”

Do I need to keep beating this drum? Connected-TV is what screen convergence was when I was talking about that all the time. Now, the screens have converged for a large number of people and it’s only going to continue. Personally, since I cut the cord, a good portion of my 6 hours a week of video entertainment comes from an online source now. I also found that I didn’t miss the other stuff all that much. The majority of my regular programming is on standard channels or, more importantly for me, Hulu.

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